1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to data processing systems and more particularly, to a computer implemented method, apparatus, and computer usable program code for interactive physical mail content management.
2. Description of the Related Art
Despite the transition of many forms of communication to electronic mail, most individuals, companies, and other groups or organizations are still dependent on mail in the form of physical mail. Many people use mail for personal and business communications and transactions. In many cases, mail provides a communication service that is both necessary and important to the mail recipient. Mail is physical mail, such as postal mail, and may be delivered by the postal service or other similar contracting or delivery services.
In many cases, mail recipients receive mail in a remote mailbox. Checking the remote mailbox may require time and effort regardless of whether there is actually mail in the mailbox. For example, in many cities, an individual may have a mailbox in the nearest mail facility. The mail facility may be miles away from the location of the mail recipient. In other cases, the individual may live in a rural area with a distant mailbox.
Different pieces of mail are of different importance to the mail recipient. For example, bills may be considered of high importance to the mail recipient while so called junk mail for a sweepstakes may be of low importance. In some cases, a mail recipient may spend time and effort to check the contents of the mailbox without knowing whether any of the information of the delivered mail provides value to the recipient. In many cases, the mail recipient may feel that time is wasted checking the mailbox to retrieve low importance mail. Using current technology, a mail recipient is only able to interact with received mail by physically retrieving the mail, opening the mail, and visually determining the mail contents.